I’m sure its something ya’ll have discussed, but what are thoughts around having skill trees retain the experience they gain when you despecialise, but making the exp required to get to 20 significantly higher (like runescape grinding higher :p)?

EDIT
Other ideas (even if you dont want em! hehe)

Diablo-esque system - gain a point or points to put into skill trees as you please during leveling that are permanent (but obviously able to be reset some how). Would either require multiple points per level or for people to keep gaining points past max level.

Skill points from exploring - Put a certain number of skill point granting objects in each map that give you a skill point the first time you use it.

Hmm. Im not sure if the entire point is to disincentivize people from skill switching nor do i think they should be. My general experience is that people dont enjoy being punished for trying different skills or setups but they are quite happy to grind out skill levels.
But i think your point was it shouldnt be easy to get swap things around, and with that i totally agree!!

I brough it up because my fire mage, who is now level 70 and well specced into fire just found some neat lightning unique boots.

I can very easily respec my passives, and its not TOO much of a big deal for me to level skills in the arena at my level, but it just seems wierd and…kinda silly… that I have to basically keep my main skill (fireball) on my hotbar so that i can train up static orb and other skills to try out this build and then REtrain my fire skills when i want to go back to my main build.

Just looking for new/better/exciting ways of doing things!!

Ill probably have a brainstorm and throw a bunch of awful ideas into the OP.

In my opinion the current Skill system is a good way between a “hard and unforgiving” system where you spent your points and they are spent for good and a “soft, free to change” system where you can respec whenever you want without a drawback.

Maybe i am too much of a role player but i like the feeling when the skills grow as you use them. I am also someone who would rather use items for my skills, then skills for my items.

I still think your ideas have a point that it makes it feel silly when you want to repec in the current “endgame”, but i think that shouldn’t be a problem once we get Multiplayer and some kind of Group leveling going.

My idea in putting both things together would be a NPC for more respec abilities, or consumable items that could do something like:

Respec a skill and keeping the skill points.

Switching an active and an inactive skill, also switching the skill level.

Resets a skill and gives you some kind of other consumable that either grands Levels to another skill or helps in leveling another skill up to the level of the reseted skill (i.e. double EXP till it reaches the same level).

These consumables should be rare to find only be usable in a non hostile area like a town. They could be tradable and may be used as a high level currency in trading. These consumables could totally be Magical Slugs you lick .

I would really like to see some way to save a template of your skill tree that you have previously leveled, which you could store, so you can level a new template to try new things. The template could have a significant currency cost, but would allow you an easy way to “re-roll” your character’s specialization.

It might be nice to even have an alternative tree for your specializations selected, which you could freely switch between, would make sense to have some kind of channeling and cool-down to make the transition between alternate forms of your specializations, so you can have a boss killer and mob clear setup, but wouldn’t be able to willy-nilly swap in-combat without exposing yourself. And, this ultimately would still constrain you to using the same skills you specialized in.

This would add untold layers to the game in my opinion. Giving options to theory-craft players, diversity of play to all types of players, and give more reasons to grind skill trees.

So, the current options for respecing your character are not what the final plan is.

Few things that we are talking about/planning to have:

Individual point refund items that will be rare and tradable. These will be good for if you’ve made a mistake and don’t want to redo the whole thing.

We had talked about the skill leveling rate be tied to how much you use the skill. We tied it directly to experience because it was way easier to set up and get going for now. (this might change)

We talked about having a system by which you could respec a tree and it would keep half the points invested to give you a boost at the start.

Some sort of consumable item found in game (not MTX, never real cash for xp boosts) that would increase the leveling rate of a skill or maybe all skills in a rarer form could be possible.

We aren’t really too interested in making the skills retain all the levels when you despecialize. We want skills to be something invested in and carefully chosen. You’ll notice that right now, the rate that they level up is tied directly to flat experience gain, not percentage experience gain. So, if you’re level 1, killing level 1 mobs, a skill will level up really slowly. If you’re a level 70, killing level 70 mobs then you’ll get those first half dozen levels in the skill almost immediately. So late game you can get a skill respec’d most of the way pretty fast. We want the majority of skills to get their mechanics and play style from the trees and the majority of your power to come from the gear.

We are still open to suggestions with this sort of stuff for sure.

As for the template saving, yes and no. We will have tamplate saving and sharing. I can’t see us adding a way to actively swap between them in game without having to relevel them or use some very rare currency…

We really want to avoid the “boss killer setup” and “mob clearing setup” style. Builds should be possible and fun that can do both. If not, that’s more of a failing on my part than anything.

I’m not sure quite how extensive this will be at launch but we have big plans for it. If you’ve ever used Path of Building to plan out a PoE build. We are planning on having something very similar built in to the game and the web site. The long term goals of these features would be that you could make a build, save it to your account in game or on the web site and it would be available on both. Ideally this would be sharable to friends also.

The long term goals of these features would be that you could make a build, save it to your account in game or on the web site and it would be available on both.

I would love to see a system in which you can plan out your build POB style, and then have it drop into game in a way where you can follow it somehow, instead of having to alt-tab or have a 2nd display open!

Still a noob at playing LE , real life getting in the way , but definitely think the skill builder would be excellent .
From a beginner’s point I’ve got the first few skills unlocked to view their skill trees , excellent . The next skills are level gated which is great but not being able to preview them seems a major hinderance to getting a rough idea of where your build is going

We really want to avoid the “boss killer setup” and “mob clearing setup” style. Builds should be possible and fun that can do both. If not, that’s more of a failing on my part than anything.

That’s an awesome goal, though I’m not sure how well it will play out in practice.

Having 5 skills, that you specialize in particular ways (which is an awesome concept) may be too limiting to have generalist builds that aren’t beat out by specialized builds by a large enough margin.

Obviously there will be generalist builds that are viable (much like league starters often are in POE), but I think you’ll always end up with players who play enough gravitating toward specialized builds for different tasks.

The real question becomes, “What is the investment cost of having those specialized builds”. POE makes you level a whole new character, including going through the story again, even if the specialized build is the same ascendancy class. There are pros and cons to that model.

That may well be the right direction for LE, but it is something to consider.

I have to agree on that , while I’m only just starting LE I think specialist builds will become a thing , us players can be very resourceful !
Which leads me also onto MP , I know it’s a while off but when people group up for harder content are you expecting all classes to be self sustaining or tank and DPS and healer …which is more specialised? I was just musing on a wet work day for a while

Which leads me also onto MP , I know it’s a while off but when people group up for harder content are you expecting all classes to be self sustaining or tank and DPS and healer …which is more specialised? I was just musing on a wet work day for a while

The trinity of Tanks, DPS, and Healers is rarely seen outside of MMORPGs.

Traditional implementations of tanks and healers wouldn’t really fit an ARPG. While we’ll make sure some support options exist, the goal would be for them to add to your role in combat rather than replacing it. For example - you might have a Paladin who heals nearby allies each time they hit an enemy. That helps the group, but it does so in a way which gets that player actively engaging in combat - both dealing damage, and avoiding dangerous attacks.

Consider the difference of perception regarding what is an appropriate time for a boss fight. In a raid in an MMO you might have eight bosses, each of which takes 10+ minutes to kill - and that’s assuming you manage to defeat them the first time you try. Endgame content tends to be structured differently in an ARPG, and as a consequence a traditional implementation of a healer - someone standing at the back watching health bars to see who needs healing - would be a lot less engaging, and ultimately result in boredom through having little to do.

When we’re working on the Paladin, I wouldn’t be surprised if we take some inspiration from the Guardian class from Guild Wars 2. It’s a good example of someone actively fighting enemies while helping their allies, and I think the balanced approach works very well.

Yeah standing at the back is very boring , I know lol . So maybe more the zMonk from D3 type thing . I’m basically curious to see if it’s possible to level a support character solo type thing …bear in mind my first proper play through tonight is cancelled until Sunday now #sigh#grumpy face

Yeah standing at the back is very boring , I know lol . So maybe more the zMonk from D3 type thing . I’m basically curious to see if it’s possible to level a support character solo type thing …bear in mind my first proper play through tonight is cancelled until Sunday now #sigh#grumpy face

The zMonk was effectively a full support, which I would hope the game tries to stay away from, although that also might be a tall task.

In D3, and even in POE to a certain extent, it’s possible to bring more utility/damage to a team by sacrificing all of your own, which has always felt a bit off to me for an ARPG. In D3 though, the ‘infinite’ scaling of enemy damage and health contributed as much as the damage buffs.

It would just be nice if the respeccing during the alpha test wasn’t so expensive lol. Hard to test out different skills when it costs a huge amount of gold. Its understandable if at release you don’t want to make total respec easy, but not during test phases.

Also I’ve been trying to figure out the interaction between main stats aka STR, flat point of raw damage like 1 physical dmg, and dmg%. It seems like the raw dmg is the highest factor, and then the % plays in afterwards. Not sure about +main stats, because they are scaled pretty low (think the highest i’ve seen from crafting was like +10).

You’ll notice that right now, the rate that they level up is tied directly to flat experience gain, not percentage experience gain. So, if you’re level 1, killing level 1 mobs, a skill will level up really slowly. If you’re a level 70, killing level 70 mobs then you’ll get those first half dozen levels in the skill almost immediately. So late game you can get a skill respec’d most of the way pretty fast.

This really makes no sense to me.

On the one hand you want the skill progression to be meaningful, and on the other hand at lvl 70 I kill 100 mobs and get 15 lvls in the spell progression.

Killing 100 high lvl mobs to get 15 lvls is pointless, it accomplishes nothing but frustration. Zero challenge and just a pain in the ass to respec. Its like saying “Yes, we could make this a QoL but we would rather you kill a few 1 shot mobs so you spend 5-10 minutes to gain 20 levels on a spell you already leveled 100 times already”.

This is just my opinion, but in this way, it would be something that would deter me from trying different builds and characters.

I would make getting 20 lvls WAYYYYYYY harder than it is right now (similar to POE getting lvl 20 gems), and give the option to retain all exp when changing spells when you despecialize (via an in game currency) AND make it possible (via gold or other currency) to remove one point at a time, but make sure if you remove ALL points you still need to prior currency to despecialize the skill from the build.

I would make getting 20 lvls WAYYYYYYY harder than it is right now (similar to POE getting lvl 20 gems), and give the option to retain all exp when changing spells when you despecialize (via an in game currency) AND make it possible (via gold or other currency) to remove one point at a time, but make sure if you remove ALL points you still need to prior currency to despecialize the skill from the build.

We are going to do almost what you’re suggesting. The availability of said in game currencies is still way up in the air. The current gain rate is there because we don’t have the partial and full respec items in the game yet.

I would make getting 20 lvls WAYYYYYYY harder than it is right now (similar to POE getting lvl 20 gems), and give the option to retain all exp when changing spells when you despecialize (via an in game currency) AND make it possible (via gold or other currency) to remove one point at a time, but make sure if you remove ALL points you still need to prior currency to despecialize the skill from the build.

We are going to do almost what you’re suggesting. The availability of said in game currencies is still way up in the air. The current gain rate is there because we don’t have the partial and full respec items in the game yet.

This is excellent news.

And the current setup for testing purposes is pretty great. I managed to test all possible options on my BM spells just by doing arena high lvls.